Clear and Present Danger

It used to be that all the preparation you needed with kids' Christmas presents was to wrap them and make sure that you laid in a supply of a wide variety of cylindrical and rectangular batteries for the big day.

Now I find that you have to set aside an evening for charging battery packs, checking for and installing software updates, deciding if extra memory cards are needed, and craftily testing configuring peripherals and games with PCs and gaming consoles to ensure that your gifts work "out of the box" when unwrapped.

Last night as I was charging up the Bomber's new Xacti HD camcorder, it struck me that I have bought him a camera with easy YouTube integration at the same time as getting the Wii Michael Jackson dancing game for a neice who will be with us on Christmas Day.

A postprandial Christmas moonwalking challenge in the presence of video equipment - with which to immortalise it - and a ready supply of booze may turn out to have been a bad idea.

Islington wishes you and your significant other/partner a very GM-free, organic, locally sourced, carbon-neutral Winterval and a diverse gender/colour-blind, differently abled 2011 CE.